Awareness of cancer diagnosis and its correlation with quality of life in Egyptian cancer patients / Hadeer Ibrahim Abdelaziz ; Supervised Hesham Hussein AbdElaal , Wessam Elsherif , Dina Ezz Eldin Fahim

Thesis (M.Sc.) - Cairo University - Faculty of Medicine - Department of Oncology (Clinical)

Background cancer is a major life-threatening disease that can evoke deep-rooted fear of death and sense of loss of hope. Even the word, cancer has powerful connotations of anxiety, pain and suffering. Although the importance of physician-patient communication in the practice of cancer medicine is now well recognized, disclosure of cancer diagnosis to patients is still a major problem. Many reports showed that major cross-cultural differences in truth-telling attitudes and practices exist between western and eastern countries. If knowledge of cancer diagnosis results in additional psychological or emotional distress, one would expect impairment of health-related quality of life among these patients. Previous studies have shown that disclosure of diagnosis affects HRQL variably, with studies showing impairment, and another showing no effect. Similar data are not available for Egyptian cancer patients. Methods. We constructed a cross-sectional, interview based study that included 300 cancer patients treated in 2 Egyptian cancer centers, the Kasr Alainy center of clinical oncology and Nuclear medicine, Kasr Alainy school of medicine, Cairo university in Cairo and the Damietta cancer Institute from December 2017 to August 2018. Data of the patients was collected then the patient was interviewed to assess his/her awareness to his/her diagnosis The anxiety and depression were assessed by Hospital anxiety and depression scale (HADS). The quality of life was assessed by functional assessment of Cancer therapy-General Questionnaire (FACT-G7)

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